The race for North Carolina House District 40 offers voters a rematch, as incumbent Rep. Marilyn Avila, R-Wake, faces Cary Democrat Margaret Broadwell, who lost her previous bid in 2012 to unseat the four-term incumbent by a margin of 54 to 42 percent.
Broadwell, a former two-term member of the Morrisville City Council and a former mayor, told Carolina Journal that the cornerstone of her campaign rests on issues affecting not just Wake County voters but also the state’s population as a whole.
“As one example, education in North Carolina has suffered greatly over the past few years, and we must make education a top priority in both funding and opportunity again,” she said. “The future prosperity of each child in our education system and the future of our economy and global reputation is at stake.”
Broadwell, a native of Richmond, Va., who moved to Cary with her family at age 9 in 1954, is a small business owner. Avila , who moved to North Carolina from her native Georgia in 1973, is a retired chemist.
Both candidates agree there’s more work to do in the area of funding for education, but disagree on the legislature’s handling of the education budget since Republicans took control in 2011.
“If you look at the trend starting in 2007-08,” K-12 education funding “was definitely down,” Avila said. ”It kept heading further down two or three years since then, and we’ve been playing catch-up since 2011.” State spending on K-12 education actually grew by about $500 million last year, she said.
Broadwell believes otherwise.
“It is the responsibility of the state to provide good education for each child, according to our North Carolina state constitution,” she said.
“In my view, the General Assembly has currently dropped the ball in this arena. We must make funding the needs of our education system a priority again,” Broadwell said. “While budget restraints make this a challenge, we cannot ignore the need or refuse to find the funds.”
Avila said that one issue she has made a priority is the disposition of misdemeanor cases involving 16- and 17-year-old defendants are adjudicated. New York and North Carolina are the only two states that treat 16- and 17-year-olds as adults in the criminal justice system, she said.
A bill she sponsored during this year’s short session of the General Assembly would have created a civil citation process for juveniles and raised the age of juvenile jurisdiction to include 16- and 17-year-olds charged with misdemeanor offenses.
The bill further called, by 2020, for any juvenile defendant convicted of a misdemeanor crime carrying prison time to be housed separately from the adult prison population. The bill passed the House 77-39, but stalled in the Senate.
Avila opposes taxpayer-funded business incentives such as the 25 percent tax credit that the film industry benefited from for decades in North Carolina. The General Assembly allowed it to sunset this session.
“They are the least effective in terms of getting return on investment,” she said. “Incentives in and of themselves are not evil, but they have to be developed in a way that’s fair not only to new businesses that want to come to North Carolina, but also to businesses that have been here and made us what we are.”
Both candidates generally agree that the beneficiaries of taxpayer-funded incentives should be required to create a certain number of jobs, or provide some other benefit to the state’s economy.
“I am in favor of incentives, if contractual requirements for productivity are also built into the incentives,” Broadwell said. “For example, if XYZ Company agrees to hire [a certain number] of local employees within a specified time frame, then the benefit to North Carolina families could be substantial.
“I believe the [film] industry has shown itself to be of a tremendous benefit to North Carolina both in economic productivity and in promoting North Carolina nationwide and globally,” Broadwell said. “I am in favor of continuing economic help to the industry in order to retain their activity within North Carolina.”
Avila said she’s not a big supporter of renewable energy subsidies, either. Renewable energy companies are “not economically viable if they’ve got to be supported by subsidies,” she said. She supports traditional energy sources such as natural gas and clean coal generation.
Last year Avila sponsored a bill that would have repealed 2007 mandates on electric power utilities to purchase renewable energy, which have driven costs beyond the national average [http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusives/display_exclusive.html?id=11000].
Avila said renewable energy such as wind and biomass cost more to generate, and requiring more of those sources creates an unintended outcome on the cost of traditional energy sources.
“When you start ratcheting down [what you produce], it, too, is going to get more expensive,” Avila said.
While Avila opposes the expansion of Medicaid under the state’s current system — last year she sponsored a bill aimed at blocking the expansion of Medicaid or the creation of a state-run health care exchange — she indicates a level of support for some form of future expansion.
In January 2013, state Auditor Beth Wood reveled that a performance audit had uncovered $1.4 billion in cost overruns between 2009 and 2012 and that North Carolina’s administrative costs for Medicaid were 38 percent higher than the national average because of systemic problems with how the state Department of Health and Human Services manages the Medicaid program.
“I am opposed to something you have no handle on, and don’t know how much you’re going to spend in the future,” Avila said.
During this year’s legislative session, Avila was part of a bipartisan coalition that put together a bill to establish an accountable care organization system in Medicaid as part of an effort toward modernizing the existing one. But she stops short of endorsing the creation of a separate agency to bring more accountability to the Medicaid program.
“I really can’t see when you look at Medicaid as a part of DHHS — it’s 75 percent — that type of organizational change is the solution,” Avila said. “If you move it out, you are going to end up with some duplication of services over time.
“I think we are more prepared to handle the claims that are generated, eligibility, making sure people are in the right programs, and making sure they get the right service for their particular need,” Avila said. She leans toward expanding Medicaid coveage if it’s funded using private insurance premium supports.
“Arkansas, I believe, looked at a plan like that. I don’t think you can write it off the table completely. You can never take that attitude toward a problem, and when you have uninsured people in the state, it is a problem.”
Broadwell favors Medicaid expansion.
“I have seen no compelling reason not to take federal [money], which North Carolina needs, in order to provide help and assistance to persons who rely on better and sustained health care through Medicaid,” she said. “In my view, North Carolina needs these [funds] in order to fulfill our moral and legal responsibilities to the people of North Carolina.”
Kristy Bailey is a contributor to Carolina Journal.